Wednesday 20 April 2011

Jamie Oliver – the Nanny Cook



I've discovered that Jamie Oliver, a telly cook who could bore for England, not content with lecturing us on what to eat is now lecturing America in a show called Food Revolution. What follows is my response to this news, posted on a discussion thread. It’s been slightly adapted for use here.

I saw this thread yesterday and decided to hold back, for the simple reason that my first emotion was one of anger at the subliminal message that is being peddled by this ghastly cook, this frightful male Mary Poppins. The reference here is a deliberated one, but let me hold off on this for a bit until I've made some more general points.

So, his preaching from the culinary pulpit is being broadcast in the US as Food Revolution, is it? One should always try to understand revolutions, in politics or in food, by looking at previous examples, by looking at the route they have taken. In this regard America’s present is our past.

The last government here, the government of Tony Blair and latterly Gordon Brown, was one of the worst in our history, chipping away systematically at all sorts of civil liberties, seeking to micro-manage lives, right down to the most intimate and personal levels. Things got so bad that it was even the subject of a book - Philip Johnston’s Bad Laws. In the introduction he made the following points;

Yet despite the claim to represent the British people, New Labour actually felt like an alien interloper in an ancient land, preaching the fetish of modernism and despising tradition. It evinced a predisposition to micromanage individual behaviour and ride roughshod over liberties, both of which are very non-British traits.

I wrote my own gloss on this book, posted on 17 May last year (Bad Law), but for short here is one key passage;

We now have more CCTV cameras than any other nation in the world though there is no evidence at all that they are effective in reducing crime. We are observed even more closely than the citizens of such places as North Korea and Cuba. We are beset by armies of parking enforces and clampers, as well as being pestered by a growing army of health fascists. The smoking ban threatens to destroy the pub, one of the great British institutions. Latterly the nation’s health supremo has alluded to the deleterious effects of ‘passive drinking.’ Even school lunch boxes, an intimate bond between parent and child, can be investigated by the healthy eating brigade.

Yes, that's one dimension of this appalling onslaught - the fascists of the healthy eating brigade. And who do you think they adopted as an avatar, who do you think Tony Blair adopted as the food guru, one who would bring a 'revolution' in eating, focused on school lunches? I don't think I need to say, do I?

Oliver was sold as the food Poppins; well, he wasn't; that's just how I see it - a sanctimonious, hectoring Hector, who was out to 'reform' the nation's eating habits. Up and down the country schools, anxious not to appear out of step, anxious not to be victimised by the snoopers, the government inspectors and the do-gooders, adopted 'healthy lunches'.

People were even empowered, as I have said, to look at the contents of lunch boxes and send lecturing written warnings to parents if they did not like what they saw. Even in the worst days of Soviet tyranny I doubt things ever went that far. What was the result? 'Healthy' options went uneaten; children went hungry; mothers were seen at school gates, handing through emergency 'food aid.'

It really is appalling that this disease has now hit the States, this nannying Jamie-knows-best approach. I see from one recent news report that Chicago has even banned home made lunches. My God, what’s happened to America, what's happened to the Land of the Free, when this sort of state-tyranny is allowed to pass without major protest? How far are people prepared to allow things to go? What’s next: compulsory work camps for the deviant eaters?

Oliver is no more than the populist face of the nanny state, a lisping culinary megalomaniac and school-dinner obsessive, as Brendan O’Neil wrote in last week’s edition of the Spectator. If that's not bad enough he, so far as America is concerned, is a foreigner, a sanctimonious outsider. Actually if the American people like him so much I wish they would adopt him on a permanent basis. The sooner my country is free of this ass the better.

I'm annoyed; it's obvious I'm annoyed, but I do emphasise it's not at those who watch this show - it's at the lie they are being sold, that people can be corralled like sheep into adopting a 'healthy' lifestyle, the kind of lifestyle sanctioned by Oliver and his insufferable kind. For America to be seduced by this condescending and patronising food moralist is just too awful. If the price of freedom is fat kids then let it be.

29 comments:

  1. I love that the diner owner is giving him the "who the fuck are you?" attitude that first episode. Snooty Brits j/k. ;-)

    Coll

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  2. Ana - well said! I can't stand Jamie Oliver. You should look on the bright side though. If he is on telly in America we might get a break from him on screen over here :-)

    Glen

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  3. I have had the good fortune to know of him only by reference in the UK press. I have no interest in the antics of fadists, whether food, health, travel, political, or what have you. They almost invariably are found to be completely bonkers. That explains why Chicago would welcome him with slack-jawed credulity.

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  4. April 20 The birthday of the Fuhrer.

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  5. There are too many fat people in America how about in Britain? The obese are a burden on the medical services as they are prone to cardiac and arterial diseases. They also consume too many resources for their output, they are generally not efficient to maintain. Lap band them all.

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  6. Precious metals are climbing, hyper inflation on the way and food prices will rise.

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  7. Coll, right on! It's lovely to see you. :-) Do you have a Twitter account by any chance. If you do link up with me there.

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  8. Calvin, I was really so surprised that any city in America would do this, even Chicago.

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  9. Anthony, yes we have plenty of lazy fat people here. It's simply not worth curtailing the liberty of all because of a few lard asses. Oops - politically incorrect. :-)

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  10. Food inflation here is a certainly an issue but it's by no means out of control.

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  11. Been following you on Twitter awhile, baby. Just tweeted you.

    On J.O.,

    He was trying to turn the diner's signature shake into a 'healthy' smoothie, and the owner was laughing and saying "Uh, been making it 50 years, and your's is too pricey to make." Sometimes these celebs don't get how hard eating like that is on your wallet

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  12. They elected Obama; need I say more?

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  13. Do you ever have the feeling you're fighting a losing battle? There seems to be something inexorable in these trends. Brave new world. Road to serfdom. It's been long predicted.

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  14. Coll, I've replied. Sorry, I forgot. I'm using the service much more frequently now than I used to.

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  15. Calvin, no, you need not. Do you know much about Marco Rubio? I've read that he is likely to be a future star of the GOP.

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  16. ...that has such people in it. Mark, I'm a fighter; I simply can't help myself - it's my nature. I may go down but it won't be without a battle.

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  17. Sorry, no, I don't actually pay much attention to politics and political personalities on a day-to-day basis. I take the long view and track the major trends without stressing the ephemeral details. Mostly it is just noise.

    Back to food: America has its very own food celebrities. Have you seen the movie "Julie and Julia"? Julia Child was v. popular on PBS in that network's first two decades. She was a hoot.

    When I was in England, I remember Fanny Craddock and her long-suffering husband Johnny in the 1960s, then the lugubrious Clement Freud who went on to be a very competent MP, then some prancing ninny who went by the title 'Galloping Gourmet' . . . but by then I had pretty much lost interest in watching the preparation of food I couldn't actually eat.

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  18. We have lots of cookery shows here, Calvin, usually hosted by one pompous sleb chef or another. So far as I know there are no American imports. I never watch these things anyway; they are a real turn off for me, the preserve of the pretentious lower middle classes, hoping to make an impression at dinner parties from hell. :-))

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  19. "If the price of freedom is fat kids then let it be."

    I couldn't agree more Ana.

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  20. Ana - if he was reducing the number of cigarettes smoked by the population, would you be saying the same thing? I don't know, maybe you would. Do you think the people who eat the shit that's served in school cafs have freedom? Aren't they more free if they're healthy and happy - if they're educated about the effects of unhealthy eating? Your writing is full of rhetoric - 'this ghastly cook, this frightful male Mary Poppins' - how does that help anything? And ok, you dislike the idea of the nanny state, but because Oliver reminds you of it doesn't necessarily mean what he's doing is bad. What if his motivation is sound? What if he wants people to be healthy and happy? Why would you want to stop that?

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  21. I'll say this quickly and dash for cover as I get the distinct impression that I'm in a set of 1 as far as favorable opinions about J O go :)

    I actually like J O. He may not be an intellectual but he seems sincere about making a positive difference (whether he actually does or not) and that's good enough for me.

    And whilst I did think he was perhaps taking on more than he could chew with the American revolution, I think it's wonderful that he attempted it.

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  22. Adam, Did you not read all of the above, particularly the extract from my Bad Laws blog. In short, in response to your first question, yes, I would. I have no interest in preaching and preachers, no interest in health crusaders of any kind, least of all in the traduced and debased form of a telly sleb like Oliver. We are not children; we each and everyone of us have the right to make out own choices free of moral arbiters, those who would seek to decide right and wrong, good or bad, up or down, on our behalf.

    There is no such thing as good food or bad food; there is just food. If some people seek to overindulge in one thing rather than another, in burgers as opposed to tofu, then that really is up to them. If people chose to eat ‘shit’ as you put it that is their choice, or would you have choices made for them, by earnest middle-class do gooders? A rhetorical question, because clearly you would.

    My writing may be full of rhetoric but that’s how I like to express myself; it makes it all so much more lively and interesting. If you don’t like it you don’t have to read it; there are plenty of other blogs, far less rhetorical, much more anodyne than mine.

    Oliver’s motivation is to make money, not that I have any objection to that. What I do object to is the authority he has been give as an arbiter of culinary taste, a role bequeathed on him by the last government, a role this pathetic obsessive (oops, more rhetoric!) has indulged in to his greater good and the greater guilt of the earnest middle classes.

    Who the hell is Oliver to determine what makes people healthy and happy? Oh brave, new world that has such people in it. You clearly have paternalistic frame of mind, Adam, about as far removed from me as is possible to imagine. As I said elsewhere in debate, those who need to develop some understanding of a balanced diet, the overweight pizza and burger bashers, are not going to pay any attention to healthy-eating campaigns, just the earnest and anxious middle-classes, living in a perpetual fug of recrimination and guilt. Life is short. Who needs to feel guilty about eating?

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  23. TBT, that’s absolutely fine. I should say that I have no particular animus against Oliver as a cook, apart from the fact that he is part the obsessive celebrity cult, something I despise. His dreadful accent also irritates me, if I am honest. However, if his American show had been called, say, Jamie Celebrates Food I would have said nothing. The fact that the word ‘revolution’ was used really raised my hackles, especially as I associate it with the political initiatives of the previous government, in which this man became something of an avatar.

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  24. A lot of opinions here! I like it.. glad I helped inspire this onslaught! =)

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  25. Meredith, I have to thank you for the inspiration. :-)

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  26. I need my school to do all the parenting for me. In fact why don't the principles come over to our homes and tuck our children into bed. Come on, where does this stop? It's a slippery slope to Hoover and the CIA.

    (Brothers & Sisters: Run Baby Run).

    Give me Nigella Nigrina any day:

    I don't wish to come over all Freudian, but tubes of lipstick like these are undeniably voluptuous: there is something so sensually pleasing about the gorgeous feel of them and take it from me, the sleek slick of stick to mouth inspires oral gratification.

    ('The moment I wake up ...' The Times. Saturday 11 November 2000).

    Trust Miss Lawson to say something like that!!! As a child Nigella Lawson prayed to God to give her big tits and was amply rewarded with "A sticky-out bottom and sticky-out bosom." Her father, told her when she was 11 that "A sticky-out" tummy was sexy in a woman.

    TIP: Try her fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, from Nigella Bites.

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  27. Don't temp me. That sounds so fatening. :-))

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